


30 Minutes or Less

by craftyAnatomist



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Pizza Place, Canon Bisexual Character, F/F, Workplace Sex, accidental edging?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-07 00:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8775523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftyAnatomist/pseuds/craftyAnatomist
Summary: Liara's part-time job at Normandy Pizza has been going well, even if it's been a little uninteresting; one of the only problems has been her difficulty bonding with one of her coworkers, the somewhat antisocial delivery girl Tali. What is it that ties her up in knots every time she tries to speak to her? Is she just intimidated by her, or is it something more... exciting?





	

Liara breathed in deeply as she entered the staff room, and instantly felt a bit more at ease. After only a month of working at the pizza place, the combined smells of oregano and tomato and baking bread were already comfortingly familiar. She took off her backpack, heavy with history books from her trip to the college library, and dumped it in a locker.

 

She had yet to figure out whether working a part-time job while studying was a clever financial choice or the first step on the road to total burnout, but so far it hadn’t seemed too bad. Her co-workers all seemed like pretty decent people; the short-tempered cook with all the tattoos had taken a bit of warming up to, sure, but other than that she had had an easy enough time making friends. With one major exception - something she quickly put out of her head as she put on her apron and cap and got ready to work.

 

In the time she had spent working here, Liara had learned that weekend nights, like this one, were generally super busy. Being the nearest place to campus where you can buy pizza meant they were in huge demand for parties, and so every few minutes she would greeted by either a bunch of drunk college students coming in the door to pick up a few pizzas or a phone call to make an order. Tonight, however, was unusually slow; standing behind the counter, Liara almost felt tempted to go get one of her textbooks so that she could at least use the long waits between customers to read rather than doing nothing. When the phone finally rang after one particularly long stretch of inactivity, she practically fell over in her rush to answer it.

 

“Hi, Normandy Pizza, how can I help you?” She scribbled down the order and passed it to the kitchen staff, who as far as she could tell were having just as boring an evening as she was. James had apparently decided to kill time by working out, while Jack was absentmindedly passing one of the kitchen knives from one hand to the other in a way that made Liara feel just the tiniest bit nervous. Liara returned to her spot by the counter, again enjoying the warm baking smell as it gradually wafted out of the ovens; a pleasant moment suddenly interrupted when she heard loud swearing from the back of the building. Or at least, it sounded like swearing - she couldn’t recognise the language.

 

Going to investigate, she found that the noises were coming from the garage. More precisely, from the pizza delivery girl, Tali. Tali was tall, with dark eyes and dark skin - Liara had never seen her hair colour on account of the purple headscarf she always wore - and as far as Liara could tell had gotten the job not because of any kind of skill in dealing with customers (something she seemed to resent, to be honest) but because she could ride a motorbike so quickly and effortlessly that it almost seemed more accurate to describe it as flying than riding.

 

“This stupid thing is broken,”  Tali said, in an accent that Liara still couldn’t quite place. She gestured at her bike, a shiny black and silver machine currently laying on its side on the garage floor.

 

“So you can’t deliver the pizza?” Liara said, immediately cursing herself for stating the obvious. It was moments like this that meant that after a whole month of seeing her every time she came to work, she still hadn’t had a proper conversation with Tali; somehow every time she tried she said something silly, or stumbled over her words, or just blanked. She wasn’t sure why. Part of her wondered if it was Tali’s appearance, that maybe the whole butch biker thing with the leather jacket and the boots combined with her being a head taller than her made Liara feel intimidated - but if that were the case, she would have had a hard time making friends with Jack, too, and she had managed that pretty well. So why on earth did she keep getting so flustered?

 

“Hold this for me for a second,” Tali said, handing Liara some kind of tool she didn’t recognise, clearly deciding that the question about the pizza just wasn’t worth responding to right now. She crouched down to work on the bike, and Liara stood awkwardly next to her, hoping that no customers were impatiently waiting to order while she was absent from the front of the store.

 

Despite not having the slightest bit of knowledge about motorcycle repair, Liara found herself drawn to watching the other girl at work; whatever she was doing, she was obviously giving it a lot of thought, her brows furrowed and her eyes fixed intently on the bike. It occurred to Liara that she hadn’t had a chance to really look at Tali this much before. Slowly, almost unconsciously, she gradually moved her gaze from Tali’s serious face to the rest of her body.

 

As she stared at her, it gradually dawned on her why she had been getting so tongue-tied any time she talked to her. Up to now she had never noticed herself being attracted to a real-life woman (celebrity crushes being another story entirely, of course), and had taken her previous relationships with guys as evidence that she was 100% no-doubt-about-it Straight. But now that she was noticing every curve of the biker’s body it was hard to find any other explanation for her feelings other than intense, undeniable attraction.

 

“Hand me that, please,” Tali said, turning towards Liara and reaching her arm out. Liara went to hand her the tool but, still flustered from her sudden realisation, let go of it just short of Tali’s hand, and it clanged loudly against the floor.

 

“Oh crap, I’m really sorry!” Liara said, immediately reaching down to pick it up again, and realising too late that Tali had started reaching for it as well. All of a sudden, the two of them were face-to-face, their noses nearly touching. Tali laughed, and - unfortunately for Liara;s efforts to act un-flustered - it was a surprisingly cute laugh for such a serious looking woman. Liara handed her the tool, repeating how sorry she was for dropping it.

 

“Why do you apologise so much?” Tali said jokingly, looking up at Liara as she stood up. “Cute girls like you can be forgiven for pretty much anything.” Liara felt her face get incredibly warm, embarrassing in itself but even worse when she imagined the contrast it would make with the cerulean of her dyed hair.

 

“I…” Liara mumbled, not really sure of how to respond. “I didn’t know you liked girls.” Once again she wished she had better control of the things that came out of her mouth when talking to Tali; what if she took offence?

 

Tali raised her eyebrows, and was silent for just long enough for Liara to wonder if she had in fact offended her. Then she laughed again, and she went back to working on the bike. Liara started to move towards the door, figuring since she wasn’t going to be any help with the repair that she should go back to work before she said anything else embarrassing.

 

“Wait a minute,” Tali said, without turning around, and Liara stopped by the doorway. Tali made a few more adjustments to her bike before putting her tools back in her toolbox and walking over to Liara. “Finished!” she said, and Liara was surprised by the genuine enthusiasm and pride in her voice. This whole encounter was making her realise that she had made a lot of assumptions about Tali; maybe she wasn’t the most cheerful person when she was delivering pizza, but now that she was in her element repairing something it was like her whole face just lit up.

 

“Great, I’ll go and get the pizza for you,” Liara said, turning to leave the room, and Tali gently but firmly grabbed her arm.

 

“Not yet.”

 

Liara looked at her in confusion.

 

“The free pizza delivery rule - we need to deliver it in thirty minutes or less or they get it for free, right?” Tali asked in a low voice, moving closer to Liara. “If I ride fast enough, I can get there in under thirty minutes and still have a few minutes to have some fun before I have to leave.”

 

_ What kind of fun? _ Liara started to think, before Tali’s hand reaching up under her shirt and softly touching Liara’s side answered her question for her. The feeling of fingers on her skin sent a pleasant shiver through her body, and she pressed herself closer to Tali. She nuzzled her face against Tali’s cheek and closed her eyes. Tali shut the door, and as soon as it closed - giving the two of them privacy, though Liara was still worried about being interrupted - she kissed Liara, moving her closer to the wall and pushing her against it.

 

Tali paused mid-kiss and looked at Liara, who was practically out of breath with excitement. “Do you want me?” she asked, her arms wrapped around Liara’s waist.

 

“I do. I really do,” Liara said, smiling and looking at Tali’s eyes, her dark eyelashes framing them beautifully. All she wanted to do was to grab her, to maybe feel Tali’s body react the way Liara’s had when Tali had touched her, but something stopped her. Liara wasn’t…  _ inexperienced _ , exactly, but she was still at the point of having had few enough physical relationships that she was hesitant to initiate anything for fear of doing something wrong. 

 

Tali, on the other hand, seemed to have no such worries. Her hands moved smoothly from Liara’s waist, to her hips, and inside her pants, grabbing her ass more forcefully than Liara would have expected. A noise escaped from Liara’s mouth before she could stop herself, making her worried for a second  that someone would hear her, until she decided that she didn’t care.

 

Liara wrapped her arms up around Tali’s shoulders and kissed her, loving how her mouth tasted, how kissing her made her forget that anything else existed in the world, just the two of them - and then moaned into the kiss as she felt Tali move one of her hands closer to Liara’s pussy, softly exploring the inside her underwear with her fingertips. Somehow the lightness of her touch made it even more overwhelming than if she had been rough; it was like she was teasing Liara, the way she was softly tickling her thighs so that her whole body felt electrified. Her initial nervousness now pushed to the very back of her mind, Liara put her hands up Tali’s t-shirt, groping her breasts, finding it harder and harder to control herself each time Tali touched her. “ _ More _ ,” she said, grinding herself against Tali’s hand. “More, more..”

 

And then Tali froze, taking her other hand off Liara’s ass and using it to take out her phone. She looked at the screen and cursed. “I need to leave now if I’m going to make it in time,” she said, screwing up her face in frustration. Liara whimpered, desperate for Tali to finish what she had started. “Believe me, I don’t want to leave either, but I’m already pretty close to being in trouble with the boss.”

 

“Can you at least kiss me goodbye?” Liara said, holding back from moaning again as Tali slowly slipped her hand out of her underwear. Tali smiled - practically smirked, Liara thought - and brought her face close to Liara’s, and kissed her in small kisses along her jaw and up to her mouth, ending by gently biting Liara’s bottom lip.

 

“We’ll save the rest for next time,” Tali said as she walked away, and Liara nodded, still leaning against the wall. She was in a daze, warm and flushed and breathless from what had happened, her body still feeling like it was expecting more. It was a few minutes later, when Tali had already gone to get the pizza and sped away on her bike, that the sentence fully sank in.

 

_ “Next time?” _


End file.
